EARLVILLE, N.Y. -- Matt Van Heusen knocked on the door of a white colonial home with blue shutters on Earlville's main drag. He had a Madison County Sheriff's deputy with him. And a search warrant.

They were there to count chickens.

When homeowner Mike Kicinski came out, the code officer said "We can do this two ways."

The search warrant, executed Nov. 22, was for the half-dozen sheds and barn on Kicinski's 4-acre property on the village's northern edge.

"I can go through every one of them, or you can just show me where the chickens are," Van Heusen said.

Kicinski walked him and the deputy to the chicken coop. There, Van Heusen counted the chickens and took their photos. The final number: 26 chickens.

The chicken-coop search warrant, the first search warrant of any kind in Van Heusen's 10-year career as a codes officer and possibly the first ever issued by the village of Earlville, was the latest chapter of a five-year legal battle between Kicinski and the village over his poultry.

Chicken Fight in EarlvilleMichael Kicinski has been battling the Village of Earlville for five years over his right to have chickens. It was about to go to court in December when the village decided to drop the charges. Kicinski, a Tea Party member who ran for Congress, had 26 in the village. The issue came to a head when the village executed a search warrant to count his chickens.

The chicken fight in this village is part shame and part claim to fame. The mayor had to write a press release because there were so many media inquiries. That happens next to never in the village where the library, court, fire department and village office are all in the same building next to the one stoplight.

Earlville had scheduled a jury trial over Kicinski's chickens. The jury menu? Chicken wings, one village official joked.

But the village dropped the charges of breaking the 2007 municipal law banning chickens hours before the trial was scheduled to start Dec. 4. The mayor and village board were satisfied by the 26 chickens during the search warrant chicken count.

For Kicinski, a Libertarian and local Tea Party founder who is running for Congress and has run for village trustee and mayor, the skirmish wasn't about the chickens. It was about his personal freedom as a property owner, he said. The chicken fight was symptomatic of government using its heavy hand to crush the little guy.

"The fact is I was defending my rights," Kicinski said, standing in his driveway. Behind him was a late-model minivan whose tailgate was a checkerboard of bumper stickers bearing conservative soundbites.

Backyard chickens

Beyond the political principles Kincinski says are at stake, the Earlville chicken fight is part of the growing nationwide backyard chicken movement. Increased interest in keeping chickens - mostly for eggs - is forcing communities across the country to formalize a patchwork of chicken-coop laws.

Many villages and cities have outright bans on chickens and other livestock, but quietly agree to look the other way as long as no one complains about the clucking. Or the smell. Chicken manure is a nose-wrinkling smell. Kicinski said it's not a problem for his birds because he sprinkles their droppings with lime.

Several cities, including Ann Arbor, Mich., Fort Collins, Colo., and South Portland, Maine, have all voted recently to allow chickens, according to Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group focused on sustainable living practices.

The issue is on Syracuse's radar, too. The city does not allow chickens. But there are people who quietly raise them in city backyards and collect their eggs.

Andrew Maxwell , director of the Syracuse-Onondaga County planning agency, said the city is looking into a law that would allow a small number of chickens.

"If people want to do that in this community, I think there clearly are benefits. I think it could be a great thing," Maxwell said.

Chicken fight in Earlville

The chicken fight in Earlville, population 1,300, began in 2006 with a complaint about the smell. At the time, Kicinski was running for mayor of the village, which sits 6 miles south of Colgate University.

A code enforcement officer came out to check, but found no smell and decided the complaint was unfounded, according to Kicinski and village records.

When Kicinski moved into the village in 2003, chickens were banned but he was able to get written permission to keep them from the village board.

The first agreement allowed him to have 60 chickens: 30 for eggs and 30 for meat. In 2006, he had the number increased to 102 chickens.

Kicinski, 55, is not the usual poster child of the backyard chicken movement. He's not the usual anything. He's a founding member of the Norwich Tea Party Patriots and a stay-at-home dad who homeschools his children.

He and his wife, Cathy, have 13 kids. The youngest is less than a month old. Cathy is a registered nurse who works at Hamilton Hospital. Kicinski was an electrical engineer who worked in fiber optics and electronics in Dutchess County.

Kicinski said he lost his job in 2001, the victim of technology downsizing. They moved to Earlville because he couldn't find work in Dutchess County and they could no longer afford to live there.

The chicken coop is near the center of the property, which has an 1800s-era printing press in one of its half-dozen shacks. A rooster stretched his neck at a reporter and photographer, then let out a loud crow.

There's just one rooster right now, Kincinski said as he threw cracked corn in the coop. "They're like watchdogs," he said.

The chickens scrambled for the sweet treat, then went back to scratching at the ground. They wandered around, quietly pecking and poking their beaks through the wire mesh, unfazed by their near-celebrity status.

Kicinksi conducted the entire interview outside - more than an hour - outside in 10-degree temperatures. His birds include some with fancy pedigrees.

There are Black Star hens, known for laying large brown eggs, and Ameraucanas, which are also called "Easter-Egg layers." They lay greenish-blue eggs. Then there are some plain white birds.

Kicinski's kids collect the eggs and help take care of the birds. In warmer weather, when they have surplus eggs, they give them to the local food pantry.

In July 2006, another resident asked Earlville for written permission for chickens like Kicinski's. It was then that the board decided it needed a new chicken law that set a number and made the rules clear, said Van Heusen, the codes officer.

The village trustees wanted to find out how many chickens Kicinski had so they could grandfather his chickens in, but every time they asked him how many he had, he refused, Van Heusen said.

When the village passed its new law that banned chickens and other livestock in December 2007, Kicinski wouldn't cooperate. So his chickens were banned, too.

Van Heusen said he was told to do nothing about Kicinksi's chickens unless someone complained.

A complaint came in March 2008 about a rooster crowing. It was a warm day in the little village, so Van Heusen decided to walk over to Kicinski's house to investigate, he said. He could hear the rooster as he approached.

Van Heusen said he left a copy of the law and sent a violation notice through registered mail. He said Kicinski refused to sign for the letter three times, so he had to send a process server.

It's the only time Van Heusen, also a codes officer for Lebanon, Augusta and the city of Cortland, has ever had to use a process server for a code violation. Kicinski said he never refused the registered letter.

Van Heusen, whose other job is a city of Cortland firefighter, has a hard time not chuckling as he talks about the Kicinski chicken investigation. "I hear a lot of jokes about this," he said.

The case went to village court first in April 2008. The judge found Kicinski guilty of violating the no-chicken law. He was fined $100 and ordered to unload the chickens. Kicinski appealed. A higher court sent the case back to village court to be retried.

The original judge failed to ask Kicinski if he wanted a lawyer. The village had trouble keeping a judge during that time. "It kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed," Van Heusen said.

During those delays, Van Heusen said he continued pressing for the easy fix that could end the court case: Counting the chickens.

"We'll even let you pick who counts them," Van Heusen recalled telling Kicinski. He said the village offered to have Kicinski's lawyer count the birds. Kicinski rejected the offer.

Kicinski said he never violated the permission he was given to own chickens when he came to Earlville. The agreement never said anything about letting someone count the chickens, Kicinski said.

"He was real stubborn about it," Van Heusen said.

Defending his rights

Standing on his rambling property, which at different times was a print shop and shoe-repair shop, Kicinksi did not demur. He has a homemade billboard at the edge of his property that sarcastically welcomes visitors to Earlville. "Home of Spite Law No. 1 of 2007," the sign reads.

"Why would I want someone to inspect my property? This is my private property," Kicinski said. "They're accusing me of not working with them. But the fact is I was defending my rights."

The village, Van Heusen said, is satisfied. The 26 birds Van Heusen found were well under the agreed-upon 102 chickens in the most recent variance.

But Kicinski still wants justice, he said. He wants the village to apologize and he wants them to pay for his legal costs. The case cost him and his family more than $10,000 to defend, he said.

Kicinski also wants the village to repeal the 2007 law banning livestock . "This law is an infringement to everybody," he said.

Next to his chicken coop are several pens for rabbits. They are empty right now. But that could change.